Contact centers are used to contact individuals for different purposes, with voice calls being a common form of outbound communication. Voice calls can reach one of several outcomes, such as: being answered by a live person, not being answered, reaching busy, being answered by an answering machine or voice mail service, etc. Each of these call outcomes may warrant different treatment by the contact center. For example, some contact centers rely on automated equipment, such as a dialer, for originating the call, and upon the call being answered by a live person, the dialer will connect an available agent to the call. To maintain efficiency of agent resources, the contact center may connect an available agent to the call only when a live person has answered the outbound call. In other implementations, the contact center may terminate the call if the call is answered by an answering machine. Obviously, it would be undesirable to mis-categorize the call as being answered by an answering machine if it is in fact answered by a live person. In such cases, the dialer may terminate the call and the answering person would then hear nothing upon answering the call. Obviously, this would cause frustration on the part of the called party.
Thus, improved approaches are needed for handling a call originated by a contact center and distinguishing between the various outcomes a call may encounter. It is with respect to these considerations and others that the disclosure herein is presented.